Always the same stale news and always the same uncle

Herta Müller is famed for her novels - in these essays, she writes about herself and her era, her work and her books, about history, politics and morality. A significant book about a violent century.

Herta Müller began her Nobel Prize banquet speech with these words: "To have gone from a child herding cows and ended up here in this townhouse in Stockholm - the distance between those two places really is bizarre." Perhaps this trajectory from the small Romanian village to the world of literature can best be understood through Herta Müller's essays. In them, she writes about her childhood and adolescence, reports on her persecution by the secret police, but also addresses her own writing and its literary and political aspects.

Her new book, "Immer derselbe Schnee und immer derselbe Onkel", features texts she has written over the last few years: her impressive Nobel Prize acceptance speech - "every word knows something of the vicious circle"; coming to terms with the files held on her - "Christina and Her Dummy", as well as memories of her friend Oskar Pastior and their collaboration on "Everything I Possess I Carry With Me" (Atemschaukel). Portraits of friends and contemporaries add a special, intimate note.

"It is the secret of her beautiful language that makes these essays so deeply unsettling. Every single one of her words has weight." Michael Naumann, Die Zeit